prototypes long gone
by OverlyObsessiveWriter
Summary: She needs to stop them, before they come to finish what they started.


PROJECTs do not seek indulgence. They do not ponder emotions, or look for meaning in anything. They are given objectives and expected to complete it in timely manners, with the sharpest precision. Practicality is what's expected of them, and they deliver on what they were built to do. The cycle continues, their whole lifespan.

But dancing is not practical. To them, it's frivolous, silly, a waste of precious time and stamina, self-indulgent. Its frowned upon and sneered at among PROJECTs, for deviating on the standards they were supposed to follow, for being an imperfect machine, for showing emotion and meaning. Every movement she makes, every motion of the dance she follows, feels like rebellion.

But she embraces it, because it's all she has left. Of everything they have taken from her, the memories of the dances, of a semblance of home, family, and comfort, they're all she remembers now.

She doesn't know what had happened for her to end up like this, only how she had gotten away.

A metal table, and straps to hold her down. Machines and scientists, taking her apart and putting her back together again, arguing over what was supposedly best for her to perform her job, what was ultimately best for them in the long run. Treated like scrap metal, or like a precious tool. Never a person, or something with a soul.

She had tried to regain her humanity, grabbing and holding on to all she could find and all she had left and refusing to give it up. She had lashed out, with pain and fury in her metal heart, an intense feeling that ached for the losses she couldn't remember. She had killed, turned their own weapons against them, spilling red and black, almost tearing her way out of their steel buildings. And when they finally caught her, they threw her away to die in the wastes outside their walls. She was defective, imperfect, unpractical, too stubborn to give up her spirit. She was a malfunction, another failed prototype they couldn't control.

She refused to go back ever since, refused to become their machine and lose what remained of herself.

With the strength she refused to let PROJECT take away from her, she made a name for herself outsides the walls, and despite her reluctance, she became their legend, their figure of hope and strength. Their leader. And she found a strange new comfort in them, preserving through dangers and sharing time together. Finding they were not the only ones, and being meet with sympathy or compassion, or simply a little bit of help. Almost like a family.

When she was alone and safe, she danced. She recited all the movements she could remember, searching and piecing them together from the depths of her brain, both wiped of the person she once was and filled with the wires and chips that connected her to her cybernetic blades. Once they had hacked her own spirit to weaponize her for their own gain, but now she used what they did to her own benefit. Now she has turned it into her greatest asset.

Occasionally, she sees more than what she was used to. Flashes of another life, of another person. Of a completely new setting, a completely different time. But they feel foreign to her. More foreign than the dances she performs with her metallic, artifical body. But they are only tiny glimpse, and they fade before her consciousness, unsure if she'll ever see them again. She chooses not to agonize too much over tiny pieces she didn't know the meaning of. But sometimes she can't help it. Finding meaning, after all, was a staple of humanity. That she still was herself.

Then the Outcasts arrived, people like her that were stripped of their souls, and then discarded. They were angry, vengeful, and sometimes with a glitch of general madness. They wanted to take down the one who abandoned them, and they wanted her to join them.

Yes, she was angry, and she too, craved revenge. But what made her accept in the end was a piece of overarching fear in the back of her mind, an uncomfortable, unbearable emotion she hadn't felt before and wanted to get rid of. The fear that she will lose anything that mattered to her. Her new family, her emotions, her own life. Her dances.

She hears a wolf's howl, sees the logo of the all-seeing, encompassing PROJECT, thinks about what they have taken from her and how they used her. And she knows she has to stop them.

She needs to, before they come to finish what they started, to destroy everything she has.

* * *

**A/N: I wrote this in a short notice for a small fanfic competition, and decided to publish it. Not much, just a small introspection into my own take on PROJECT Irelia. I may be wrong about all this, but who am I to care about canon?**

**Oh well. I may decide to post another chapter focusing on another character. My eye's on Akali. Maybe I'll do even more. But it may take a while. No guarantees. **

**Thank you for reading, and feel free to leave a review to tell me what you think of it.**


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